Blattler et al

to see if maintenance programmes are effective at treating poly-drug use. specifically, to see if prescribed heroin would affect someone's use of cocaine also

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Participants

266 participants already on drug treatment programmes. 2 unsuccessful attempts to give up and addicted for more than 2 years.

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what actually happpened?

heroin administered once a day under staff supervision. counselling. interviews once every 6 months that talked about emotions and stability. self report's of cocaine use which was validated by urine tests.

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what did Blattler compare (+ how long were the participants studied for)

the baseline measures and then the follow-up data. followed up for 18 months.

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Results

daily cocaine users went from 30% to 6%. cocaine users decreased from 84% to 48%

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Conclusion

high monitored heroin maintenance programmes are effective at reducing cocaine use

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Generalisability

large sample but only generalisable to heavily dependent, quite long term users

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Reliability

self report data validated with urine tests. cause and effect hard to pinpoint because other factors could have impacted the results such as the help received from counselling

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Applicability

applied to helping poly drug use solely one drug (heroin in this case) before moving on to other treatments that can target individual drugs

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Validity

already on drug treatment programme so natural task. all the attention that they received from the study may have impacted their behaviour e.g. stopped taking cocaine because felt so many people were believing in them.

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Ethics

right to withdraw as there was a very high drop-out rate. the study was monitored thr

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Ethics

right to withdraw as there was a very high drop-out rate. the study was monitored throughout